Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Before I get stuck into writing
about the various stages of our African overland adventure, I want to finish up
describing the last stage of our South American journey, eleven days spent
in Buenos Aires and Uruguay. It was a
different style of travelling than we had done up until that point: no bicycles, a largely urban setting, hotels
instead of our tent, and culture and history rather than nature as the main
focus.

We left Asuncion at 1 pm on
Wednesday, February 3rd in a biblical downpour. At the bus station, the TVs were showing
scenes of flooding in some neighbourhoods of the capital, reminiscent of the
devastating floods a month earlier. Our
bus left late, with my bicycle packed in the luggage hold after the usual
last-minute negotiating and bribing with the luggage guys. It’s amazing how the easiest, most elegant
way to get around becomes so tedious, difficult and fraught with hassle as soon
as you pack the bike in a box and try to get it on public transportation. I had to pretend that I had spent most of my
Paraguayan currency in order to get a discount.
And no sooner were we underway than we went through the Argentinian
border and had to unload the bike and luggage for customs: more negotiating, half-truths and bribes to
the luggage guys there. I think
Argentinian luggage handlers at the borders must make an absolute killing out
of the obligatory tips which they extort from passengers.

Buenos Aires Art Nouveau architecture

After that, the bus trip was
quiet and very long. We retraced our
previous bus trip south along the flat floodplain of the Parana (the
Argentinian side of the Chaco), then continued along the river towards the
metropolis. We were in comfy seats and
slept most of the way. The next morning
I woke up in the Buenos Aires suburbs, dozed off again and woke up definitively
as we drove past the huge soccer stadium of River Plate, one of the two biggest
clubs in the country. We raced past one
of the two airports, Aeroparque, and the port, and quite suddenly we were in
Retiro bus station, the nerve centre of transport for the entire country. It was very early in the morning, and we sat
in an overpriced café slowly waking up and making plans.

I ended up leaving Terri with
wi-fi and a second cup of coffee and lugging my bike the (considerable) length
of the station to a left-luggage place, then heading out into the city to find
a place to exchange dollars for pesos.
As I walked out into the early morning commuter rush, across a small
park towards the tall buildings of the Microcentro, I felt as though I was in
New York City. On Calle Florida, the
pedestrian heart of this business district, I passed dozens of dubious
characters shouting “Dollars? Cambio!”
before finding a slightly less shady guy who led me to a Chinese shop where I
got 14 pesos to the dollar. I was
unsurprised to find that the new president, Macri, had not gotten rid of the
cambio guys when he got rid of the artificially low official exchange rate back
in December. I retreated to Retiro to
pick up Terri and we set off on foot towards the apartment we had rented for
the first two nights. We walked back
along Florida and its Belle Epoque buildings, then turned right up Hipolito
Yrigoyen to find the Loft Argentino serviced apartments.

I don’t often rhapsodize about
places that I stay, but I loved the Loft.
It wasn’t that expensive (about US$32 a night in the most expensive city
in the most expensive country in South America), and gave us a big space to
spread out our stuff. We had a bathroom
and a king-sized bed in an air-conditioned bedroom upstairs and a kitchen and
living room downstairs. The rooms faced
inwards onto a courtyard and were remarkably insulated from any noise from the
street outside. Best of all, every
morning we went across to the breakfast room and enjoyed a sumptuous spread
while leafing through copies of the morning’s newspapers. I couldn’t believe how good a deal it
was. We only had two nights booked, and
they were booked solid over the weekend, but we decided to go to Uruguay for a
few days and then return. We made
reservations for our return, and then set off to explore Buenos Aires.

Evita on the Avenida

After a filling and inexpensive
Asian buffet lunch, we caught the Subte, Buenos Aires’ excellent and
inexpensive (5 pesos, or 35 US cents) subway out to a shopping mall to buy
tennis tickets. I had noticed that there
was an ATP tennis tournament the next week in Buenos Aires, with Rafael Nadal,
David Ferrer and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga among the featured players, and I was keen to
spend a day watching pro tennis for the first time in 16 years. I used to go to a lot of tournaments; between
1990 and 2000 I probably averaged a tournament a year, including trips to
Wimbledon, the Australian Open and the US Open (twice), along with smaller
tournaments in Toronto, Sydney, Santiago and Madras. We also knew that the Rolling Stones were
arriving in Buenos Aires to give three concerts and, although tickets were
probably sold out, we wouldn’t mind seeing them live either. As it turned out, tennis tickets were
inexpensive and plentiful, while Stones tickets were rare and almost US$300 a
person, so tennis was on but the Rolling Stones were not. We then retreated back into town to Calle
Florida to get our boots professionally shined and for Terri to do some
window-shopping. While I was having my
boots done, Terri wandered off to have a look at shoes in a nearby shop and,
presumably on the way there, somebody opened the top compartment of her daypack
and stole the wallet inside. Welcome to
the big, bad city! BA has a well-deserved
reputation for pickpockets and for more violent crime as well, and Terri got
off lightly; perhaps $50 in cash and her NZ bank card. She decided that we would regard it as a
“city tax” paid by the unwary. We
finished the shoe shining, then walked back to the apartment so that Terri
could make the tedious call to her bank to cancel the card. We nipped out to Carrefour, bought a small
fortune in groceries and cooked up some excellent steaks, washed down by some
equally excellent Argentinian wine.

Protest outside the Casa Rosada

Friday, February 5th
was a great day of exploring the bustling metropolis of Buenos Aires. After filling ourselves up at the breakfast
buffet, we strolled towards the centre along the Avenida de Mayo, crossing the
Avenida de 9 Julio, the broad Champs Elysee-style boulevard that features a
huge obelisk in one direction and an immense mural of Evita Peron on the side
of a building on the other. Portenos
(the Argentinian term for a native of central Buenos Aires) strolled by looking
elegant, and the city looked at its best under cloudless blue skies. Public transport buses rolled by along 9 de
Julio, and at the end of Avenida de Mayo we detoured into the beautiful
Cathedral, once Pope Francis’ church, before coming out into the Plaza de Mayo
and its elegant buildings. Here, during
the dark years of the military dictatorship, the mothers of the people who
disappeared during the Dirty War (mostly tortured and murdered by the army and
then buried secretly, or else thrown out of helicopters into the ocean) held
weekly protest meetings. They were the
only people who dared stand up to the junta publicly, and they were an
immensely important force of moral suasion in convincing the army to hand over
power after the Falklands fiasco. The
day we went there, the Plaza was a buzzing hive of protest again, this time
over the arrest of a left-wing activist in the province of Jujuy. Peronists, labour activists, Falklands
veterans, students and citizens of all sorts, from all over the country, had
come to establish a protest camp in the square, right in front of the
presidential palace, the Casa Rosada.
Riot police had established a line of barricades to dissuade the crowd
from storming the palace gates, but otherwise it was a peaceful scene, with
marquee tents set up for lectures and folk dances, and vendors selling hats and
handicrafts. We admired the grandiose
architecture of the Casa Rosada, then headed out behind the palace towards the
harbour of Puerto Madero.

Aboard the Uruguay in Puerto Madero

It was a blisteringly hot day,
just as we had experienced for the previous few weeks in Paraguay, and it made
for a long sweaty walk to the Costanera Sur.
Along the way we detoured to visit the SS Uruguay, an Argentinian naval
ship which had played a key role in the drama of the Nordenskjold Antarctic
expedition in 1902-04. We had had a
lecture during our cruise on the MV Ushuaia about this expedition, and had
visited one of the key sites, Esperanza, where some members of the team had
waited out a very long winter and summer waiting for rescue after their ship
was crushed in ice and sank. It was the
Uruguay which came to the rescue, and walking around the ship and peering at
the old black and white photos, it was though we were suddenly back on the
Antarctic Peninsula where we had spent such memorable days back in November. The views from the ship along the waters of
Puerto Madero to the yachts and condominium skyscrapers of the new developments
beyond were sweeping, and reminded us that for all that Argentina has had a lot
of miserable economic news over the past few decades, there are still a lot of
Argentinians who are living a comfortable, or even gilded, existence.

Fancy yachts and buildings, Puerto Madero

After all the urban bustle and
architecture, culture and history of the first part of the walk, the Costanera
Sur was a welcome change. It’s a nature reserve,
tucked between Puerto Madero and the waters of the River Plate estuary, and it’s
a surprisingly good place to go birdwatching.
There were dozens of species of birds to be seen, particularly waders
and waterbirds bobbing around in the long ponds along the road.

Me with the Bull of the Pampas

Office workers from the tall buildings nearby
came out for lunch at the various food trucks parked along the road, and we
joined them, eating delicious churrasco sandwiches for an unbeatable price (about
35 pesos, or under US$ 3) and watching the birds. After a while, we decided to penetrate
further into the reserve itself (so far we had just been wandering along the
perimeter), but we found that there was a Formula E electric car race in town,
and their racecourse blocked access to the park, which was closed for the
day. We watched a bit of the practice
session (those electric cars can accelerate amazingly well, and make very
little noise) and admired the statues of Argentinian sporting greats that lined
the walkway: Fangio, Vilas, Pascual
Perez, Sabatini, Ginobili and others. I
had my picture taken with Vilas and my teenage idol Sabatini.

We headed back towards town via
the ferry terminals for Uruguay. The
prices that Buquebus were asking for the following day’s departures were
astonishing: just to Colonia (the port
on the other side of the estuary), they wanted 1800 pesos (US$130) each! Cursing their prices, we walked to Retiro and
bought night bus tickets instead for 590 pesos (US$42) instead. Finally wilting under the heat, we walked
back to our apartment and had a luxurious apero dinner of cheeses, meats,
bread, salad and more good wine, happy with our day at large in the big city.

Horned screamer, Costanera Sur

The next day, February 6th,
we left our luggage in storage at the apartment and headed out for another full
day of exploring on foot. This time we
headed towards the upmarket neighbourhoods of Recoleta and Palermo, past
luxurious apartment buildings and chic cafes.
Unlike Santiago de Chile, the wealthy have not abandoned the downtown
core of the city, and it felt very vibrantly urban and chic, like New York or
London or Milan. Our destination was
Recoleta Cemetery, where the great and good of BA society were buried for a
century and a half.

Raul Alfonsin's grave, Recoleta

There are dozens of
graves of well-known figures—presidents, generals, scientists, writers,
sportsmen—but the one tomb that everyone heads for is that of Evita Peron, wife
of President Juan Peron, subject of Andrew Lloyd Webber musical immortality,
icon of the populist left and the most famous Argentinian (aside, perhaps, from
the Pope, Lionel Messi and Diego Maradona).
She is still a potent symbol for the aspirations of the poor, and her
image and name are everywhere, including all over the protest camp in front of
the Casa Rosada. The cemetery breathes
Italianate luxury, with gorgeously carved funeral monuments and mausolea. Evita’s grave still boasts lots of fresh
flowers, but some of the lesser-known graves from the past were overgrown with
weeds and had broken windows. My
favourite graves were those of Raul Alfonsin, the first post-military president
in the 1980s, and Luis Federico Leloir, a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry in
1970.

The tomb of Evita Peron

Funerary monument, Recoleta

We lunched in a little pub just
outside the cemetery, and then set off on foot through the succession of wooded
parks that lead through the neighbourhood of Palermo, making for a great place
for cycling, running and walking. We
later heard that Mick Jagger had been out alone on foot along the same path
that morning, tweeting photos along the way; the local press were devoting
pages and pages of coverage to the Stones, more than you would expect for a
visiting head of state. We eventually
turned off the tree-lined avenues, past the rather dumpy-looking zoo and went
up the Botanical Gardens, where we spent a happy hour wandering in the shade of
the trees and watching the colourful butterflies in the butterfly garden. A quick supper in a Lebanese restaurant, then
a Subte ride back to the apartment to pick up our bags and another Subte ride
to catch the bus to Montevideo.

The bus ride was easy and
uneventful, although when we got off the bus at 1 am, we didn’t realize that we
hadn’t been stamped out of Argentina, only into Uruguay, and spent the next
three days worrying that Argentinian immigration officials would give us a hard
time on the way back. (They
didn’t.) We woke up at 6 am as we pulled
into Montevideo bus terminal, and once again spent a couple of hours relaxing
and enjoying good, fast, free public wifi (a rarity in Argentina, but common in
Uruguay) as we searched for a place to stay and for affordable ferry tickets
back to BA. Seacat Colonia offered us
tickets for Wednesday afternoon at a much more reasonable US$ 22 per person, so
we snapped them up quickly. The bus
station was the cleanest, safest, best-organized bus station we saw in South
America, a far cry from the menace of Santiago or the chaos of Retiro. No hotels online seemed very cheap, so we
decided to walk into town and find a place on our own. It was a pleasant 40-minute stroll through
Saturday morning streets, past big apartment buildings that had seen better
days, into the centre of town. Half an
hour of searching turned up an acceptable hotel at an acceptable price, as well
as explaining the dearth of rooms: it
was Carnival season in Montevideo, and tourists from Argentina and Brazil were
flooding into the city for the party.

Palacio Salvo, Montevideo

Showers, a quick lunch and a
wander through the old town followed. I
liked the Ciudad Vieja, although many of the buildings were in a state of
advanced disrepair. My favorite building
was the hyperbolically grandiose Palacio Salvo, like something out of a 1930s
futuristic movie. We rented bicycles and
rode along La Rambla, the coastal road, for 15 km, past the flashier suburbs
where the upper middle classes live in beachside apartment buildings. It was good to be riding a bicycle again and
to get around to interesting neighbourhoods.
Montevideo sprawls a long way along the coast, and we were nowhere near
the edge when we turned back. We stopped
at a lighthouse and gazed out to sea. It
was noticeably cooler than in BA, and there was a hint of rain in the air. Uruguay is most visited by Argentinian
tourists for its beaches, and we had thought of going further east to explore
them, but had been put off by weather forecasts of rain. We rode back to town, had a disappointing
pizza for dinner and were in bed early, wiped out by the night bus.

Montevideo coastline by bike

Monday, February 8th
was a fairly lazy day, as we slept in, then made a late start on exploring the
old town, via a stop in the fashionable Facal café (Terri was surprised and
somewhat horrified that Montevideo does not boast a single Starbucks
outlet). We had an afternoon snooze that
somehow lasted until 4, then went out to the wonderful Andes 1972 museum which
commemorates the survival story of the Uruguayan rugby team that crashed high
in the Andes in 1972, and which provided the story for the movie Alive. It was done very tastefully and thoroughly,
and the proprietor’s enthusiasm was infectious.
We wandered out into the streets, had a steak sandwich in a little café,
then watched a crowd of mostly older Montevideans dancing the tango in a main
square. It looked very elegant and
fitting for the country that produced Carlos Gardel, the greatest figure in the
history of tango.

Very nice Uruguayan wine, Colonia

The next day we had some time
before our afternoon bus to Colonia, and we spent it wandering through the old
city again. We tried several museums,
but they were all closed for Mardi Gras, so we ended up just walking, ending up
in the lovely atmosphere of the Mercado Central, a tourist mecca full of
seafood restaurants. We sat and drank a
glass of quite quaffable Uruguayan wine (we never even knew Uruguay produced
wine) before heading back to pick up our luggage, catch a city bus to the bus
station and then take an intercity bus to Colonia. Once again we snoozed away the afternoon,
lulled by the rocking of the bus. I
think our bodies were finally recovering from the exertions of our months of cycling
and hiking.

Sunset meal, Colonia

Colonia proved to be a very
pretty colonial gem. It was founded by
the Portuguese back in the late 1600s to keep an eye on the Spanish just across
the River Plate estuary in Buenos Aires.
After decades of conflict, the Spanish took over the city in the 1780s. In the confusion of post-colonial South
America, Uruguay changed hands a few times between Argentina, Brazil and
independence before finally settling into a role as a buffer state between its
two giant neighbours. Colonia had a
number of colonial-era buildings and ruins, but most of the buildings are slightly
more recent, with a flavour of an early 20th century retreat for the
rich. The little cobbled streets of the
old town make for lovely walking, and the views from the lighthouse, all the
way to the skyscrapers of downtown BA on the horizon, are wonderful. We ended up eating a tasty steak dinner in a
waterfront restaurant, watching a spectacular sunset light show on the horizon,
a memorable ending to our too-brief visit to Uruguay.

Back streets of Colonia

The next morning we strolled
around the old town in greater earnest, visiting the ruins of the old
governor’s mansion and the old city defensive walls. I sat and sketched the lighthouse, and then,
after a lunch that consumed our leftover Uruguayan pesos almost exactly, we
headed to the ferry dock for the long and tedious process of going through
Uruguayan and Argentinian immigration procedures. Despite our worry, the Argentinians didn't mind that we had no exit stamp from Argentina from a few days previously. Once again we snoozed most of the way (it was
actually a bit of a rough crossing, and sleeping probably prevented
seasickness). We stumbled off the ferry,
stood in another long line to put our luggage through Argentinian customs and
came out at cka place we couldn’t identify.
It certainly wasn’t the ferry terminal we had visited before, and we
were completely disoriented, underneath a huge expressway. A bit of random walking and we finally
figured out that we were just beyond the edge of Puerto Madero. We tried unsuccessfully to find a cab (there
was stiff competition from the hundreds of fellow passengers) and ended up
walking the familiar streets back to Loft Argentino. We were tired, but looking at our schedule,
we realized that it was our only chance to go see a tango show. Many were quite expensive, but they involved
an entire evening of a fancy meal, all-you-can-drink alcohol, a tango lesson
and finally the show. There was a more
reasonably priced show without any of the add-ons just ten minutes’ walk from
our apartment that we had checked out previously, so we quickly showered and
headed over, arriving around 9:30 for a 10:15 show. We had the bad luck to hit the one evening of
the year that they had a special early schedule for a special group, so we
hopped on the Subte and headed to another show, the Gardel. There we found tickets for the show only (no
food, no booze, no tango lesson) were still US$ 96, which seemed far too high,
so we returned tango-less to the apartment and turned in for the night. Buenos Aires seemed to be a study in
contrasts in terms of prices: either
really quite reasonable, or incredibly expensive, depending on how far in
advance you bought tickets.

Pablo Cuevas unleashes a backhand

Thursday, February 11th
was Terri’s last full day in the city, and the day for which we had bought
tennis tickets. After breakfast we tried
to register online for the EcoBici free bicycle rental service run by the city,
but failed. We walked into town and
spent a long time finding an EcoBici office, filling out forms and then going
to a municipal office to get the magnetic cards. It took forever, and we were late arriving at
the tennis. The first match was still
going on, and we sat, baking in the furnace-like heat, high in the stands
watching Pablo Cuevas dispatch Santiago Giraldo. Next up was the tenacious clay court terrier
David Ferrer who handled local hope Renzo Olivo. After a break for supper, we trooped back in
for the night session. First of all the
Italian veteran Paolo Lorenzi beat another Argentine, Diego Schwartzmann, in a
highly entertaining three-setter, before the main event of the evening. Rafael Nadal, cheered on by a suddenly full
stadium, had little difficulty beating the Argentine veteran Juan Monaco,
although his once-fearsome clay court game didn’t look up to his usual
impeccable standards, with lots of forehands sailing long. There was a murmur in the crowd at one point
as Guillermo Vilas and Gabriela Sabatini wandered in to take their seats,
Argentinian tennis royalty. We came out
at 10:30 to find the trains finished for the day, so we ended up catching a cab. Again, for a long (10 km) ride, the fare was
a reasonable US$ 9.

Pleased to be back at a pro tennis tournament

Friday, February 12th
we set off after breakfast to use our hard-won EcoBici cards, only to find that
the system has a few flaws, like a complete absence of bicycles anywhere in the
city centre. We eventually gave up and
walked to the Costanera Sur, where this time the park was open and we were able
to walk the interior pathways looking for birds. There were plenty to be seen, and it was good
to get some exercise, although the heat was like a hammer. We emerged after a couple of hours, had
another tasty churrasco sandwich and then headed back to the apartment, via
some last-minute shopping on Calle Florida for leather belts for Terri. I escorted her to Retiro, saw her onto her
bus, and suddenly was alone in the big city.

David Ferrer, the Energizer Bunny of tennis

I spent the last three days in BA
cocooned in the air conditioned comfort of the hotel, writing blog posts,
sorting through photos, napping and watching the rest of the tennis tournament
on TV. Nadal and Ferrer lost, surprisingly,
in the semifinals and the young Austrian Domenic Thiem looked impressive
winning. I did venture out one day to
the Bellas Artes museum, where an impressive collection of Old Masters and
Argentinian paintings provided a couple of hours of aesthetic enjoyment. And then, all too soon, on Monday, February
15th, I was on a flight back to Ottawa on my bike after three and a
half months in South America and Antarctica.
It was a wonderful adventure, and I look forward to exploring more of
the northern half of the continent on my next visit!

Waiting for Rafa

Terri at her first-ever tennis tournament

Rafael Nadal, showing off the forehand that ruled tennis for a decade

As for my final take on Buenos
Aires and Uruguay, I really, really enjoyed Buenos Aires, despite its crime and
obvious social problems. It has a
confident urban feel and provides culturally rich city living to its huge
population and feels unlike any other South American city I have encountered,
an island of cosmopolitan sophistication.
Uruguay is an interesting country, very socially progressive (legalized
marijuana, a very early welfare state) but a bit non-descript compared to
Argentina. If I went back, I would
concentrate on the eastern beaches before heading off to Brazil.

Friday, March 18, 2016

This will be a slightly atypical
blog post from me: much briefer than
usual, and looking forward instead of backward.
I want to fill you in, gentle readers, on the upcoming travel plans.

Terri and I are in Zambia now,
doing some work for a humanitarian project that Terri started almost a decade
ago. She and the Social Service Club of
her former school raise money and donate it to help support a community-based
pre-school and primary school in the impoverished Livingstone suburb of
Ngwenya, and they have visited during their school’s March vacation almost
every year since 2007. I have heard lots
of stories and seen lots of pictures and videos from previous visits, but this
is my first time to see the project first-hand.
It’s been very interesting so far, seeing the pre-school and its new
project: the construction of a new
classroom building, doubling the available classroom area of the school. The students arrive from Switzerland tomorrow
morning, and for the next 9 days it will be a blur of activity: helping build the new structure, painting and
repairing broken windows in the older building, teaching lessons and doing
cultural exchanges with the pre-school students and with older students here at
a youth training centre where we are staying.
I am looking forward to it.

However, it would be a long way
to come to Africa just for a 9-day visit. After
Terri’s former students leave, we are flying south to Cape Town to start a much
longer trip. The plan is to buy a
second-hand 4WD camper and use it to explore large chunks of the African
continent over the coming months. We
haven’t made firm plans in terms of dates and routes, but the basic plan is
threefold. We will first pick the
low-hanging fruit in terms of ease of travel by exploring the landscapes of
Southern Africa (as far north as Namibia, Zambia and Mozambique), taking advantage of the lack
of irritating visa rules and the network of largely decent roads. I am particularly excited to visit Namibia,
Botswana and Mozambique, but we plan to visit all of the countries in the south
over the next few months. We also want
to try to dive and snorkel in the awe-inspiring Sardine Run that passes the
South African coast, having seen amazing footage on BBC’s Blue Planet
documentary series. Having a vehicle
should greatly simplify matters in terms of having access to the remote wild
places that we most want to see, and in terms of camping rather than staying in
the overpriced accommodation on offer in much of Africa, as well as being able
to cook for ourselves.

Once the south has been thoroughly
explored, then it will be time to head further afield into slightly more
difficult territory. East Africa is the
likely next stage, with the familiar trio of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda being
joined by Rwanda and Burundi (the latter depending on the current state of civil unrest). Then it will be time to go further
north: South Sudan seems unlikely, given
its current civil war (although things might change), but Ethiopia and Sudan
are definites, with perhaps Djibouti and Somaliland. Sadly Somalia itself is probably completely
out of the question, as is paranoid Eritrea with its closed land borders and
hard-to-get visas.

Then, having gotten as far as
Sudan, it would be nice if we could turn west and drive into Chad to get into
West Africa. This seems sadly unlikely,
given that the route would lead straight through troubled Darfur, which the
Sudanese government would like to keep nosy foreigners out of. If (and it’s a big if) we could get through,
we could make a huge loop to get back to South Africa. If not, we might have to backtrack south as
far as Zambia to get to the next stage:
West Africa.

West and Central Africa are
almost terra incognito for me. I spent
two days in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), back when it was still
called Zaire, visiting mountain gorillas back in 1995. I also spent three weeks cycling in Togo and
Benin a few years ago. For the rest, it’s
all new territory for me. I would like
to visit every country possible, since once we’re there, it doesn’t cost much
more to keep going to another country, while having to come back on another
trip to get to a country that I missed would be much more expensive. The countries that seem least likely to get
visited are Equatorial Guinea (expensive and hard to get a visa), Central
African Republic (civil war) and Nigeria (unpleasant, expensive and with
serious unrest in the northeast).
Angola, DRC and Mauretania seem to have tricky visas as well, while much
of Mali, Niger and Chad (the most interesting bits, up in the Sahara) seem to
be no-go areas as well. Sao Tome and
Principe, along with the Cape Verde islands, both will require a flight out
from the mainland, but are both said to be well worth it. Much of West Africa has the reputation of
being overpriced and underwhelming, but with our own vehicle, we should at
least be able to travel in some comfort and seek out areas of greater
interest. Cameroon, Congo-Brazzaville,
Guinea and Mauretania sound as though they’re more interesting than some of
their neighbours, and I’m looking forward to visiting them.

Then, if we’ve managed somehow to
do a complete loop and ended up back in South Africa, we would sell the vehicle
and fly off for a glorious finale in Madagascar, a country that’s high on my
bucket list for its (sadly fast-vanishing) natural beauty and wildlife. If, instead, we end up in Mauretania at the
end, we might drive up through Western Sahara and Morocco into Europe and try
to ship the vehicle back to South Africa to sell it.

It’s not clear how long it will
take to do all of this, or even if we will accomplish it all in one long
monster trip, but it’s exciting planning a big trip, reading up on things to
see and contemplating seeing a new part of the world for both of us. Stay tuned here or on Facebook to follow our
ongoing progress!

Saturday, March 5, 2016

As always, the contrasts created
by modern travel can be jarring. I
started writing this post sitting in Thunder Bay airport a few days ago, with
the outdoor temperature hovering around -20 degrees. I’m writing about travelling through Paraguay
a few weeks ago in temperatures above 40 degrees, and it seems hard to believe
that then we were seriously concerned about heatstroke, while now I’m trying to
avoid frostbite.

Cordoba cathedral

Our bus ride from Santiago to
Asuncion was very, very long. We left
Santiago early on January 15th and arrived more or less 48 hours
later. It was a three-leg journey,
through Mendoza and Cordoba, marked by constant squabbles and arguments with
greedy Argentinian luggage handlers about how large a bribe they would receive
for loading and unloading our bicycle boxes.
By the end of the trip, Terri had had quite enough of Argentinian maleteros! We had a few hours off in Mendoza, which we
spent in the bus station, but when we arrived in Cordoba early in the morning
after a night bus, we left our bikes and baggage in a left luggage office and
walked into the historic centre of town which was surprisingly pretty, with
blocks of old colonial architecture, including the UNESCO-listed Manzana Jesuitica, the Jesuit block,
with its striking architecture.

Monument to the disappeared, Cordoba

There
were also reminders of the much more recent past, with memorial plaques to
various local people who disappeared in the days of the military government and
its Dirty War.

Jesuit church, Cordoba

The second night on a bus went
reasonably smoothly but ended early with our border crossing at 5 am, just
outside Asuncion. Paraguay counted as my
120th country, and my first new country since Sweden (six months
previously). We got into the city at
about 6:30 am and sat in the almost-empty bus station for a while catching our
breath and using good free wi-fi (something almost entirely absent from the
country of Argentina!) to find a place to stay.
We threw the bike boxes into the back of an ancient Ford pickup truck
and drove to our chosen hospedaje, the very friendly Nande Po’a, which became
our base of choice in the capital. We
spent a couple of nights in our big, comfortable room, and escaping from the
blazing heat either in the air con in our room, or in the breezy, shaded
courtyard of the hotel.

We poked around Asuncion a bit,
less for historical interest and more for practical purposes. The town had a tropical, slightly derelict
feeling to it that reminded me most of Yangon.
The downtown historic core, as is so often the case in South American
cities, has been allowed to decay while the centre of economic activity shifts
to newer suburbs. We walked around,
buying groceries to cook up at the hotel, trying (successfully) to get a couple
of cavities filled in my teeth and also trying (unsuccessfully) to get my
malfunctioning watch fixed. We also
searched for a guidebook to the country, along with a decent map and a guide to
birds; we failed utterly in all three quests, as it turns out that Paraguay is
such a small tourism market for gringos that it’s not worth producing quality
English-language guides and maps. It was
certainly annoying not having a bird book, although we did manage to figure out
a few of the birds we saw.

We also had to decide what our
cycling route was going to be. My
original idea had been to take a bus to Montevideo and then cycle north from
there to Iguazu Falls and on to Asuncion.
Since our Carretera Austral trip had taken longer than anticipated, we
had decided to start and finish in Asuncion, but we hadn’t picked out a route
yet. My inclination was to cycle south
towards the Jesuit missions and then head upstream towards Ciudad del Este and
Iguazu Falls. Terri, however, wanted to
get to Iguazu Falls as soon as possible, so we ended up riding east towards
Ciudad del Este first, and then turning downstream towards the Jesuit missions
and Encarnacion. We were worried about
heat and traffic, and the trip was about to show that both were things worth
worrying about!

Tuesday, January 19th, 67 km: Asuncion to km 57, near Caacupe

On Tuesday, January 19th
we were up by 6 am, breakfasting by 7 and on the road by 8 am, hoping to beat
the intense heat. It was a long ride
through city traffic out towards the airport, and it was already 37 degrees by
the time we got to the small commuter town of Luque. We had chosen a route that avoided the main
highway, Route 7, for much of the day. We
rode from Luque along a less-trafficked road to the lakeside tourist town of
Aregua, although we barely caught a glimpse of the lake. We stopped for cold drinks near the lake and
sat in the shade, guzzling water, trying to rehydrate after the sweatbath we
had been riding through. As we
approached the town of Yparacai, on Route 7, more and more signs announced new
housing developments; the middle classes of Asuncion are either moving out of
the city, or buying weekend homes.

When we turned onto Route 7, we
emerged into a rushing torrent of trucks, buses and cars, some of the heaviest
traffic I had ridden in in years.
Luckily there was almost always a paved shoulder for us to use;
unluckily, the people who built the road put speedbumps on the shoulder to
dissuade cars from driving on it. This
made for a lot of bumps and evasive manoeuvres on our part. The terrain began to get hillier as we rode
along, and Terri began to melt in the heat as we climbed more steeply. We had one particular climb of 200 vertical
metres in the hottest temperatures of the day (42 degrees on my cycling
computer) that almost finished her off.
We looked for a hotel in the town of Caacupe and failed to find one, so
we cycled on.

End of the first day of baking in the heat

Just as Terri thought we would
have to cycle another 25 km in the heat to find a place to stay, I spotted a
sign for a swimming pool beside the road and we turned in after 67 km to find a
lovely property run by a Paraguayan woman who was living and working in New
Jersey. We could camp at the back of the
yard, swim to our hearts’ content and escape the non-stop roar of grinding
truck engines. It turned out to be a
brilliant spot to stay, with lots of birds, a shady spot to cook, all the
mangoes we could eat from the mango trees, and the delicious feeling of water
on our skin to cool off. We ate
empanadas from the little stand next door, and went out at dusk to look for
birds down by the little stream at the back of the property. We tried out our new sleeping wraps; we had
left our heavy sleeping bags behind in our bike boxes in Asuncion, and bought a
few dollars’ worth of sheets and light terry cloth to keep ourselves warm at
night instead. It was actually a bit
chilly at night; once the sun was down, the temperatures dropped right down to
the low 20s.

Wednesday, January 20th, 73 km: km 57 to Coronel Oviedo

Our second day began even earlier
as we tried to get a jump on the heat.
We were cycling by 7:35, definitely a record for our trip, after some
cold tea and coffee and some morning mangoes.
The thermometer stood at only 26 degrees as we set off, although it
rapidly rose. We had lots of smaller
climbs as we made our way into Cordillera Province (the name is kind of a
giveaway!), along with heavy traffic and the annoying speed bumps of yesterday. After 18 km we stopped beside the road in a
traditional Paraguayan chiperia for
the national food obsession: chipas.
These are a bit like chewy bagels or buns, made with a mixture of wheat
and manioc flour and flavoured with cheese.
We ate, drank lots of cold drinks and then continued on our rolling
route across the hills. Eventually we
dropped down to a long flat stretch through the lowlands after San Jose, with
herds of cattle grazing beside the road and the heat assaulting the senses. Around noon, at the 48 km mark we passed a
fruit stand where we stopped and devoured an entire bag of oranges in one
sitting. We were beginning to appreciate
the low prices for food in Paraguay after the higher prices in Argentina and
Chile.

Life-saving fruit stand on a hot day

At 2:30, just as the air was
reaching its blast furnace maximum temperature, after 73 km we arrived in the
bustling crossroads town of Coronel Oviedo, where we passed the second-grandest
building we had seen in the entire country so far. The most impressive had been the new Mormon
Temple in Asuncion, but the Teleton building in Coronel Oviedo was also
immaculate, a gleaming new building set in manicured grounds. It seems as though the Teleton organization
collects lots of overhead before passing on the funds it raises to its constituent
charities! We were keen to swim again,
so when we spotted a hotel set in spacious grounds and featuring a swimming
pool, we turned in.

Terri trying to cool off in a hot pool, Coronel Oviedo

We paid 120,000
guaranies (about US$ 21) for a big double room with air conditioning and
breakfast, and again were grateful for the relatively low prices in
Paraguay. It was a great place to stay,
and we loafed in the pool for a couple of hours (it was so warm in the sun that
the pool itself was almost too hot, and Terri had to find a garden hose to cool
herself) before having a nap and a then a takeout meal of roast chicken. In town I met a Korean shopkeeper who had
emigrated to Paraguay back in 1980 when Korea was still relatively poor and
South America seemed to be the continent of opportunity. We went out for a dusk stroll and were
rewarded with dozens of types of birds, including hummingbirds, along with a
breathtaking display of fireflies that set the garden alight.

Thursday, January 21, 50 km: Coronel Oviedo to Caaguazu

Typical Paraguayan highway cycling

Our third day on the road was a
relatively short one, at only 50 km, but between incandescent heat and lots of
hills, it was a tough slog. We were
saved by a series of fruit stands that served us iced fruit salads and fresh
fruit juice. We stopped for lunch (more
roast chicken and a pitcher of fresh fruit juice) and then knocked off early as
we seemed to have a long hotel-less stretch in front of us. In the big crossroads town of Caaguazu, we
found another good, inexpensive hotel with a swimming pool, and spent the
afternoon lounging in the pool and napping in the cool of the room. We got up, watched the birds that came to the
little oasis of the hotel garden, and then headed out for a great meal at a
street kebab stand, a spot that attracted quite a big crowd of locals on their
way home after work. Again I was
reminded of evenings in southeast Asia, with street food and crowds in the
streets.

Friday, January 22nd, 72 km: Caaguazu to Juan E. O'Leary

Our fourth day heading east
started slowly, with headwinds and hills slowing us down. I stopped on the way out of town to buy a
baseball cap to protect my scalp from the intense sunlight. We took some time off the bike and out of the
40-degree heat in JE Estigarribia, a town surrounded by extensive Mennonite
farmsteads. The landscape had changed
from the small subsistence farms of the first few days to much bigger
commercial operations, with huge fields of soybeans, corn and wheat festooned with
signs from Monstanto, Dow Chemical and the other giants of the agro-industrial
complex. The headwinds died out, the
landscape grew flatter and the population grew taller, blonder and more
Germanic-sounding, with farmers named Jakob Braun and towns called Colonia
Bergthal. We flew along, keeping pace
with each other, via stops for fruit salad and cold water, before arriving at
Juan E. O’Leary, a town lacking in quality hotels or restaurants. No swimming pool for us that evening, sadly,
and it was a challenge finding a restaurant that was both open and had anything
to serve. Luckily, there was an
exceptionally good ice cream parlour to drown our sorrows.

Saturday, January 23rd, 82 km: Juan E. O'Leary to Ciudad del Este

Japanese immigrants have completely integrated into Yguazu

Our fifth day out of Asuncion, Saturday,
January 23rd, saw us arrive in bustling Ciudad del Este at
last. It was our longest day of cycling
so far in Paraguay (81 km) but also had the best scenery at the end of the
day. Terri seemed a bit more
acclimatized to the fierce heat, and we made quite good time along the roaring
highway. Terri led the way on downhills
and on flat sections, and kept the gap close on uphills. The day’s culinary specialty was melon, eaten
at a roadside stall, and produced at a Japanese-settled area just down the road
in Yguazu. We stopped in for snacks in
Yguazu, noting lots of Japanese family names on signs (like the Churrasqueria Shirosawa), and then embarked on the
last busy stretch into Ciudad del Este, the second-largest city in Paraguay and
a relatively recent creation, springing up since the creation of the immense
Itaipu hydroelectric dam in the 1960s. We
stopped for lunch at a very friendly little restaurant and car wash, where the
friendly proprietress took an instant liking to us and decided to fatten us
up. Not far from the border crossing
into Brazil, we turned south towards the Monday waterfalls and found a pleasant
but quite expensive hotel, the Salzburgo, to stay.

Monday Falls, near Ciudad del Este

We splashed around in the
swimming pool for a while before I dragged Terri out to go sightseeing. Monday Falls turned out to be very impressive
indeed, with chocolate-coloured water thundering over a precipice at a great
rate. The power in the water was
awe-inspiring.

Monday Falls

We chatted with several
locals who were very welcoming; Paraguay is not overflowing with gringo
tourists, and so local people were genuinely curious about our impressions of
their country, and very welcoming. The
forests around the falls are some of the scattered remnants of what was once
the Atlantic rainforest, and have been maintained as a tiny park, full of
birds, flowers and butterflies. Terri
and I wandered around looking for birds, and then sat at a little restaurant
having a beer and an empanada while watching the waterfalls.

Early the next morning we rumbled
across the bridge into Brazil, my 121st country. The usual frenetic cross-border shopping
trade was at a low point at 7:40 am, and we rolled into Brazil with minimal
delay. Foz do Iguacu, the Brazilian city
on the other side, was a modern, wealthy-looking city with well laid-out
streets and transport, a contrast to the chaos and grittiness in Ciudad del
Este. We cycled 28 kilometres from Hotel
Salzburgo, through the sprawling suburbs of Foz do Iguacu and out into the
countryside beyond. We had booked a
hotel on Booking.com that looked improbably upmarket, but it turned out to be
the right place. After a bit of messing
around and waiting for our room to be ready, we dumped our luggage and rode our
bikes the 2 km to the entrance to Iguazu Falls.

Coatis swarm a stolen bag of potato chips

Butterfly at Iguazu Falls

Iguazu Falls is one of the great
natural wonders of South America, and on this Sunday morning it seemed as
though half of the populations of Argentina and Brazil were there at the same
time. It took 20 minutes to get through
the huge ticket queue, and then a long bus ride to get to the falls themselves. Once we were off the bus, though, it was all
worth it. We spent a couple of hours
wandering around, taking photos and staring out across at the immense number of
individual falls that cut across the width of the river. Black vultures soared in huge numbers over
the falls, catching the updrafts, and bands of marauding coatis, animals rather like raccoons, prowled around trying to
steal any plastic bags that tourists might be holding and rooting through snack
bars and trash cans in search of food.

Brazilian side of the Devil's Throat

The Brazilian side of the falls is the place to get an overview of the
entire vast spread of the falls, and we certainly did just that. We were also blown away by the colourful
butterflies and birds in the jungle; Iguazu Falls is in a national park that
preserves a fair-sized chunk of Atlantic rainforest, and even has (somewhere in
the back corners of the park) jaguars.
We enjoyed the breathtaking, soaking experience of gazing out at Devil’s
Throat, the very centre of the falls, and then caught the bus back to the
entrance in order to visit the Bird Park.

Butterfly at Iguazu Falls

We didn’t know what sort of
experience the Bird Park would provide, but we lined up in the heat, paid our
admission and went inside. We were late
in the day and concerned that they would close on us, but we needn’t have
worried, as they only close the admission at 5, allowing people already inside
to stay until 7 pm. We wandered around
for two and a half hours open-mouthed with amazement. The park is very professionally run and does
a lot of rehabilitation of birds captured from the illegal pet trade, as well
as captive breeding of rare species.

Butterfly at the Bird Park

Toucan at the Bird Park

They concentrate on Brazilian birds, although they have birds from all
over the world. Their parrots and
parakeets and macaws were captivating, as were their toucans. The park has a number of enclosures inside
which the birds roam and fly freely, and Terri and I spent a long time sitting
quietly while toucans and curassows crept right up to us to investigate
us. One huge highlight was the butterfly
and hummingbird enclosure, full of whirring hummingbirds and lazily flapping
colourful butterflies. We were the last
people out of the park, and our heads were whirring with sensory overload as we
cycled back to the hotel, had a swim and dined in the buffet dining room. My one day in Brazil left me eager to see much more of this huge and diverse country; it will have to be next time!

Early the next morning we cycled
partway back towards downtown Foz before turning south across a bridge into
Argentina. It was possibly the easiest
crossing into or out of Argentina we had yet had, and we were quickly in Puerto
Iguazu, the scruffy little town on the Argentinian side. Compared to Foz do Iguacu, this side seemed
much poorer and less planned, and we had great difficulty in finding our cheap
accommodation, as there were no street signs to be found. Eventually, down a muddy anonymous track, we
found our little homestay, dropped off our gear and set off on foot for the bus
to the park.

Argentinian side of the Devil's Throat

The Argentinian side of the falls
was a very different experience to the Brazilian side. There were far fewer tourists, and the
walking trails were more extensive and felt much wilder. We walked for a few hours, covering all the
major trails and getting very up close and personal with the individual
cataracts. We started off with a very
slow train trip to the furthest part of the park.

River turtle at Iguazu Falls

We absorbed the overwhelming power of the
Argentinian view of the Devil’s Throat, then walked through the jungle track
(instead of taking the little train again) back to where the upper and lower
circuits cut through the jungle over and beside some of the hundreds of individual
falls. Again the jungle was full of
coatis, butterflies and birds, and we got in lots of walking and oodles of
wildlife. One of the most impressive
species were the great dusky swifts who nest on the cliffs behind the
thundering waterfalls.

Jay

Partway through
the afternoon the sky turned orange with dust as winds kicked up dramatically
and looked almost as though a tornado was imminent. Fifteen minutes later the dust storm was
gone, having given us nothing more than dramatic light over the falls. (We heard later that the same storm hit the
city of Encarnacion and did quite a lot of damage; we were lucky to get off so
lightly.) We caught the bus back, having
decided that we didn’t want to pay an extra 550 pesos (US$ 37) for a full moon
experience over the falls. We bought
some juicy Argentinian steaks, some good veggies and some good red wine and
cooked up a small feast back at the hospedaje.

Terri having a rave moment at the falls

The next day we had a
much-appreciated day off from sightseeing and from cycling. We had originally planned to go back to the
falls for another day of hiking, but we realized that we had covered almost
every bit of possible trail, and the weather forecast was far from
encouraging. In fact a torrential
downpour came down for much of the day, so we felt clever for not having gone
out hiking. It was good for the mind and
body to spend a day reading, juggling, doing laundry, eating and playing
guitar.

Wednesday, January 27th, 74 km: Puerto Iguazu (Argentina) to Tavapy

Wednesday, January 27th
saw us retracing our steps back to Ciudad del Este, as our original plan, to
cycle through Missiones province on the Argentinian side of the river,
foundered on the realization that much of the road had the same traffic as in
Paraguay but without the luxury of a paved shoulder. Some of the cycling blogs we read made it
sound quite nerve-wracking and perilous, so we decided to stick with the
Paraguayan devil we knew. It took
surprisingly little time to cross back into Brazil and then across into
Paraguay; I wish all South American border crossings were so quick and
easy! We rode out of Ciudad del Este. The traffic was insane; we were lucky to have
ridden the other way early on a Sunday.
Now every Brazilian and his car were heading across the bridge in search
of cross-border shopping opportunities.
We crawled out of town back to the friendly Minga restaurant in Minga
Guazu (on the south side of the road, between km 19 and 20 if you’re counting
from Ciudad del Este, or between km 307 and 308 if you’re counting from
Asuncion) where we had lunched a few days previously. Erica, the owner, was glad to see us and fed
us sumptuously again like long-lost family.
We eventually tore ourselves away and backtracked further to the highway
junction where Route 6 turns south towards Encarnacion.

The traffic lessened noticeably
as we moved onto Routh 6, although it was still a busy road. We ground out another 24 km, making 74 for
the day, before we found a place to stay.
We looked at a promising-looking swimming pool park beside the road for
camping, but it was, sadly, no longer in operation. In the tiny settlement of Tavapy, we found a
small hotel, the Emi, and downed a couple of ice-cold beers to cool off (in the
absence of a swimming pool). It was much
cooler than on previous days, thanks to the rains and overcast skies, but it
was still 36 degrees by 1 pm and pretty humid.
We set out that evening to see if the music we could here in the
distance was some sort of carnival celebrations, but nothing was going on, so
we retired to the hotel for an early night.

Thursday, January 28th, 87 km: Tavapy to Naranjito

Meeting Nestor and Ariel beside the road

From this point on, our ride
passed through endless big commercial farms, through a changing quilt of ethnic
and religious affiliations: Mennonites,
Germans, Brazilians and Japanese all featured.
Our second day, at 87 km the longest ride we did in Paraguay, saw us
leaving fashionably late at 8:15. Not
long after rolling out of town, we were passed by a couple of local mountain
bikers in spandex heading back from a training ride. We ended up having a long conversation with
them beside the road, and Ariel and Nestor recorded a short interview with me beside
the road (in Spanish) that they posted on Facebook. Ariel is a serious competitive rider, off to
the world championships in Canada in August.
As was so often the case in Paraguay, they were curious about what we
thought about Paraguay and Paraguayans.
I mentioned the heat and the crazy traffic, but also the hospitality and
friendliness of the people we had met.
After we got rolling again, we seemed to ride forever through the
sprawling town of Santa Rita. We had the
one and only attempted tourist ripoff of the Paraguayan trip, as a juice stand
wanted to charge us four times the usual price for fruit juice. We declined and cycled further to find cold
drinks at a gas station. We continued to
roll past big soybean fields and signs for Syngenta, Cargill and Monsanto. After 45 km we found an isolated restaurant
which served an expensive but huge all-you-can-eat feast over which we
lingered, using internet and escaping the heat.
(Of course “expensive” is all relative; if I were paying US$ 7 for an all-you-can-eat
lunch in most other countries, I’d be overjoyed!)

After lunch we undulated over
increasing hills, as we got up to an eventual altitude of 450 metres above sea
level. We had to ride further than we
had anticipated looking for a hotel, and when we got to the town of Naranjito
it wasn’t at first obvious that there would be a place to stay. Eventually we spotted a hotel tucked behind a
big churrasco restaurant and settled in for a well-earned cold beer. The couple running the restaurant and hotel
were both Brazilians, and everyone in town seemed to be Brazilian, to the point
that all the TV channels were in Portuguese and all the shops in town sported
posters of Brazilian soccer teams. We
chowed down on some delicious meat in the restaurant that evening, discussing what
to do when our cycling was over.

Friday, January 29th, 77 km: Naranjito to km 66

Arno Sommerfeld, quality leader in a Mennonite district

We set off the next morning
breakfastless, stopping in at a small shop after 7 km to have some coffee, tea,
bread, jam and in a small grocery shop.
We had a long discussion with the owner and her daughter. It was another day of lots of hard work
cycling without much to look at. I found
myself longing for the wonderful natural setting of the Carretera Austral; this
was too much cycling to survive rather than cycling for the joy of it. The temperature soared up to 41 degrees
again, and we ended up staying the night in a small, isolated hospedaje in the
middle of nowhere after a series of steep hills. There was no restaurant around, but the lady
who ran the hospedaje offered us some of the leftovers from her lunch and
between that and a supper of macaroni and cheese, we staved off
starvation. The surroundings were full
of interesting birds, including hummingbirds and a crowd of noisy parakeets,
and it was pleasant to sit out in the back yard playing tennis and juggling and
watching nature, including an immense toad and a big, alarming looking tarantula.

Saturday, January 30th, 64 km: km 66 to the Country Hotel (km 27), via sidetrip to Jesus de Tavarangue

I'm a little mate gourd, short and stout

We were now only 66 km from
Encarnacion, but the main attraction of this leg of the trip, visiting the old Jesuit
missions of the area, was coming up, so we planned on taking two days to get to
Encarnacion. We started the day with
some tea, coffee and oatmeal cooked out in the garden, and were underway by 8
am. We rolled easily to Bella Vista, the
first of three towns known collectively as Las Colonias Unidas, the wealthiest
communities in the country. We had mid-morning
snacks at a bakery next to the giant mate gourd that marked the fact that Bella
Vista produces much of the country’s yerba mate. The town was full of German last names and
blond hair and blue eyes. We continued
cycling through Obligado and Hohenau and by 11:30 we had reached the crossroads
leading towards Jesus de Tavarangue. It
was a tremendous relief to turn onto the road and suddenly be almost alone on
the pavement, with only a handful of cars heading out towards the ruins. We rode side by side, admiring the views and
chatting, something we had barely done since arriving in Paraguay. Fields of yerba mate lined the road and we
climbed steadily up to the village of Jesus.

Ruins of Jesus

Jesus ruins

It had been our plan to spend the
night in Jesus, but there were no places to stay that we could find, so we
decided to visit the ruins and then return to the highway. I loved the ruins, set atmospherically on the
edge of town. The Jesuits had
established a series of “reductions”, or villages set around a church, in the
area in the late 1600s and early 1700s.
By the standards of the time, the Jesuits were enlightened rulers,
helping teach the Guarani villagers skills and how to survive in the colonial
economy. They were eventually evicted by
the Spanish crown in the 1760s, either because they had become too powerful and
rich, or because the Spanish (and the Portuguese across the border in Brazil)
were not interested in having educated, skilled villagers who were harder to
exploit and force into near slavery.

The Jesuits looking military in their coat of arms

The
ruins show the epic scale of the Jesuit ambition, with a huge church (that,
like medieval cathedrals, didn’t ever get completed), a big school, workshops
and the foundations of the houses built for the villagers. The views over the neigbouring hills were
pretty, and we sat behind the church reflecting on the changing fortunes of
history.

Terri contemplating Jesus

Pretty woodpecker at Jesus

On the ride back to the main
road, we realized how much we had climbed going the other way, as we coasted
downhill almost the entire way. In
Trinidad we looked at places to stay and found them severely wanting, so we
again decided not to sleep there. The
ruins were amazing, even bigger in scale than Jesus and more complete. The tropical heat and red brick ruins made me
think of Southeast Asian ruins like Ayutthaya and Bagan. Parakeets flittered around from palm tree to
palm tree, and we were pleased to see a few burrowing owls sitting on walls and
in the grass. There was 18th
century graffiti in the ruins of the church, along with gravestones of
long-dead missionaries. I found it a
moving place to wander around.

Trinidad Jesuit ruins

Burrowing owl at Trinidad

We rode away from Trinidad around
5 pm, stopped for a fruit break to try to rehydrate and then pushed onwards,
aiming for a hotel we had heard about, the Tyrolia. We heard from a passing local guy on a racing
bike that the Tyrolia sat atop a steep hill, news which did not please
Terri. Luckily we soon passed a sign for
the Country Hotel and turned in to have a look.
They wanted a lot of money for a room, but we could camp in the garden
for a very reasonable 50,000 guaranies (about US$ 8). The place is owned by a German guy, Wolfgang,
who has lived in Paraguay for 30 years.
We ate lots of yummy food, drank home-made beer, bought honey and
German-style bread and generally spent much of the money we had saved on
accommodation.

Camping under shelter at the Country Hotel

It was interesting to
talk to Wolfgang and hear how the area has changed over the past 15 years, with
paved roads, big agro-industrial farms and clearcutting replacing dirt tracks,
tiny subsistence farms and big tracts of Atlantic rainforest. We swam in the pool, put up our tent under a
thatched roof and slept well, despite the torrential downpour that lasted much
of the night.

Sunday, January 31st, 25 km: Country Hotel to Encarnacion

Our last day of cycling in
Paraguay, January 31st, was a short one, as we only had 25 km
separating the Country Hotel from downtown Encarnacion. We rolled along through relatively light
traffic into the city, then combed the streets looking for a hotel. Our map was hopelessly inaccurate, but we
eventually found a decent hotel with an indoor pool and quiet rooms. We went out for a celebratory lunch at a
churrasco restaurant, bought our bus tickets for the next day to Asuncion, had
a long swim, then went out in search of sushi.
It took forever to find the Hiroshima, but it was worth it. We got takeout sushi and brought it back to
the hotel along with a bottle of Argentinian bubbly to mark the end of two and
a half months of riding in South America.

Running the bikes through the car wash, Encarnacion

The next day saw us bring our
bicycles, which were covered in the fine red dust of Paraguay, to a car wash to
be properly washed before loading them on the bus. The bus ride to Asuncion was long but fairly
comfortable, and we spent part of it talking to Colleen, an American Peace Corps
volunteer on her way to welcome a new group of volunteers. We rode from the Asuncion bus station back to
Nande Po’a to find that our room seemed to have been given away despite having
made a reservation. Luckily by the time
we started to put up our tent in the courtyard, the manager realized that he
did have a room for us and we slept indoors.

A day of administration in
Asuncion saw me get the finishing touches put on my dental work (two cavities
filled for US$80, a lot cheaper than in Canada, by a very professional outfit)
and get my watch fixed properly, while Terri visited the beautician to repair
some of the ravages of life on the road.
And then, on February 3rd, we took a pickup truck through a
spectacular rainstorm and the rapidly flooding streets of the capital back to
the bus station to catch a bus to Buenos Aires, where we had decided to spend
the last 10 days of our trip.

Paraguay was an interesting
country to visit, not least because I knew so little about it before visiting. It’s definitely poorer than either Chile or
Argentina, but it seems to be riding the agricultural commodity boom to greater
prosperity, and it is one of the friendliest countries I’ve been to outside of
Central Asia. There was never any undercurrent of desperate poverty or social unrest, and I really enjoyed meeting
the people along the road who were genuinely curious about us and what we were
doing. Unlike, say, Chile, we met no
other bike tourists, although local people said they did see cyclists on a regular
basis. The cycling was pretty grim, to
be honest: the incessant heavy traffic
wears on the senses and makes cycling not much fun, while the heat is pretty
fierce. I wish we had had the time to
ride up into the wilder parts of the country like the Gran Chaco. We decided not to rent a car and visit
national parks, as we weren’t sure how much real wilderness and jungle remains
to be found in the country, and how accessible it is. What we did really enjoy was the good,
inexpensive food and accommodation to be found, with great quality fruit and
meat and quality hotels for less than US$20.
I’m glad we visited, although perhaps cycling is not the ideal way to
experience the country.